When I first started coding Syften three years ago I took this piece of advice to heart: “release as fast as possible, use other tools to save time”. Now I wish I hadn’t. My first mistake: Google Auth I like using Google Auth myself. It makes the signup process much faster and more convenient (yay, no passwords!). I spent a day implementing Google Auth, decided it’s enough to start with and released the first version of my app. A few users complained that they wanted to be able to create an account with a login and password. In spite of the complaint, they logged in with Google Auth anyway. I ..read more

A few months after launching my SaaS I realised I have a problem. The people who understood the app were happy. They tweeted about it, shared it and gladly purchased the subscription. But a significant number didn’t even enter any keywords after signing up. Why? They created an account, verified their email but then didn’t even touch it? I obviously knew how the tool worked - I built it. But most of my users did not. Lesson: getting people to sign up is just half of the battle. One weird trick to boost your activation rates The trick is to spend several hours watching new users’ first impressi ..read more

Sometimes we’ll walk past a $50 bill, just laying there on the sidewalk. If we’re lucky we’ll spot it and pick it up. That’s just the type of luck that Jack from Semicolon&Sons had. Here is what he wrote on Indie Hackers: I was positively shocked this week at how strong a response I got from writing a single comment on Hacker News. Basically I was taking a breather from coding and saw someone had just posted a question Ask HN: How do you learn to build substantial, real world apps?. Considering this is my business, I simply chimed in the following comment, basically saying “THIS IS WHAT I ..read more

I woke up at 6:00 like I usually do. I made some scrambled eggs, grabbed a cup of English Breakfast Tea, added a splash of milk and sat down to work. I started my day by checking what’s new on GrowthHackers.com. This story by a mr. Dan Siepen was at the top: Wow, 76 upvotes and quite a few comments. I clicked the link and saw that it was nothing more than fourty short summaries with links to articles, presented in a fancy format. Someone who knew a thing or two about marketing was doing promotion. Perhaps I could learn something from them. Where else did they share it? Let’s do a quick Googl ..read more

I have two entrepreneuring friends and they do marketing differently. One tried an indirect approach, sharing his blog posts with a community dedicated to discussing blog posts: Well, that didn't work And the other directly advertised his product in a community dedicated to technical solutions to technical problems: Helping others while helping himself The results seem to be flipped. How does he do it? How is he able to pitch to his audience while being thanked for it? Meet Lukasz Wiktor, founder of Personal Discount. This is how he describes his approach himself: Syften ..read more

There are approximately 330 million Reddit users. Users that are famous for hating marketers. Are there people who had luck marketing on Reddit? If so, how did they do it? Is it worth it to brave the Reddit snark? We’ve seen plenty of these: Four days and no upvotes? Why even bother? Ouch, wouldn't want that. Can we turn that into this? That's more like it. Marketing on a grand scale I don’t think that I can write a better guide than Reddit Hates Blatant Marketing. It’s written by Si Quan Ong, a marketer at Ahrefs. Go ahead and read it now. And here are my notes f ..read more

Where to host your blog? What’s the best place to share your articles? How to convert views to leads? I keep writing but nobody’s reading! I’m sure you can tell I’m not a blogging expert. Nevertheless by now I did go down a few dead ends. I’ll share those with you so you won’t have to. I provided some in-depth resources from actual experts at the bottom. Before You Start To start a blog you need to make a few decisions. Luckily they’re quick ones. The Purpose Blogging is a means to an end, not a goal in itself. So figure out the following: What is the topic of the blog? How is it diffe ..read more

You know how the hustle goes. You share your article on Hacker News but it just withers and dies. You post it to Reddit but all you get is someone telling you off. You try promoting it on a Facebook group and you get banned. Can you really turn this: Four days and no upvotes? Why even bother? Ouch, wouldn't want that. Ooups! Into this? That's more like it! Perfect. Today you’ll learn how to do content marketing that gets you gratitude instead of bans. Let’s get started. General Rules of Thumb This is nothing more than How to Win Friends and Influence ..read more

You have several articles but none seem to stick. People visit, but then leave never to return again. You don’t know what to write about and the traffic a post generates is a lottery. Or maybe you’re able to attract visits consistently - but not from the people that buy. After reading this guide you’ll learn how to write a post that will make people want to click, share, subscribe and buy from you. I’ll also provide you with a guide on how to share it. If you don’t have a blog yet create one first. Okay, let’s go. Step 1: Solve someone’s problem. Preferably with your product There’s a com ..read more

There are thousands of Product Hunt Launch guides on the internet. “How to Launch on Product Hunt”, “When to Launch on Product Hunt”, “The Ultimate Product Hunt Launch Guide”, “10 Steps To a Successful Product Hunt Launch”. Not a day goes by without someone mentioning their PH launch on Indie Hackers. Everybody does it! It sure seems like launching on Product Hunt is the highlight of a product release. Should you do it too? Is it worth the effort? Judging by the sheer volume of threads and comments on the topic people expect great results. So is it worth a try? Let’s have a look at a couple ..read more